(At right is the Philippine Consulate General in New York City)To read the florid -- and highly exaggerated -- press releases issued by the media relations office of the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS), one is led to believe that the state pension fund's eCard is the next best thing after the invention of the Internet itself.
GSIS President and General Manager Winston F. Garcia boasts that it "has effectively catapulted the Philippines atop the global information technology totem pole with the G-W@PS—a secure and completely paperless end-to-end transaction system conceptualized and built completely homegrown."
As Garcia describes it, the G-W@PS, which stands for Wireless Automated Processing System, is supposed to identify a member of the state pension fund, display all of the member’s records, and even process loan applications of members without any documentary requirement.
Which is all well and good if it is working as it should, but this system has BIG problems that Garcia has not resolved even as he pledged at the program's launch last October that "we are prepared to debug any glitches that might come up."
But as is often the case with Philippine bureaucrats, Garcia cannot break out of the mold. Experts at issuing self-serving press releases that do not square with reality, he and his ilk are long on promises but short on delivering them.
Without having addressed some of the most serious glitches of this untested system, he has dispatched an undermanned team of three GSIS employees with three laptops that work as slow as molasses to enroll close to 3,500 pensioners in the United States. They are assigned to go on a road show in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and Chicago. They arrived in New York to assist in the enrollment of pensioners at the Philippine Consulate General on March 9, 11 and 12.
And whose bright idea was it to send them to the States in the dead of winter in the first place?
What was envisioned to be a showcase of Filipino ingenuity (the system was completely designed and executed by GSIS IT experts) ended up a totally unmitigated disaster during its run in New York.
What happened in New York was unconscionable, inexcusable and unacceptable.
And the blame lies squarely at the feet of Garcia, a petty bureaucratic tyrant whose leadership qualities are defined by his ill-advised purchase of a painting whose investment value to the pension fund remains questionable. To many observers, he wasted money he did not own by indulging his whimsy for expensive artworks.
The ordeal of pensioners in the East Coast started two weeks earlier when they received a letter from the GSIS signed by Garcia himself asking them to report to the Philippine Consulate General in New York City. The letter gave the impression that they had to show up on certain specific dates or they would lose their pension. They were NEVER told beforehand that they could do it themselves using a kiosk that would be set up at the Consulate at a later date. They only learned about this through flyers hastily handed out by a panicked GSIS staff as they were already cooling their heels while the overworked GSIS team was struggling with their computers to work. The information came too little, too late.
The misinformation had forced pensioners and their companions to rearrange their schedules to meet what they thought was a drop-dead deadline. For their sons, daughters, other relatives and friends, this meant taking off from work, even without pay for some poor souls.
They showed up at the Consulate as soon as it opened its doors at 9 a.m. At the reception area, each was given a number on a first-come, first-served basis and told to proceed to Kalayaan Hall at the second floor of the windowless building on Fifth Avenue.
Kalayaan Hall is an ornate room, a throwback to the Imelda Marcos era when what passed for good taste was actually kitsch masquerading as high art. It is impaneled with narra wood and decorated with capiz shells and detailed bronze statues of rare Philippine birds. It has certainly seen better days but now it is in dire need of maintenance. The carpet looks worn-out. The dim lighting gives one the feeling that he is within a gaudy bordello in the middle of nowhere.
It did not have enough seats to accommodate everyone who showed up, so those who came with the sick and the elderly gave up theirs in favor of the pensioners. They sat on the floor or hang around with their backs against the wall. The retirees were handed two forms to fill up, one of which prominently displayed the name of Union Bank, a GSIS partner in this totally useless exercise.
Over an hour into the process, people began getting antsy as it was nearing lunchtime and they did not have any clue as to what was going on inside a back office behind a side door at the head of Kalayaan Hall. Two men, one from the Consulate and the other apparently from the GSIS, were handing out forms but no announcement was ever made as to what was going on.
And then the Consul General, Cecilia Rebong, emerged from the backroom. People immediately smelled trouble when she tried to explain away the delay with lame excuses. The backlog, she said, was caused by problems with the GSIS laptops. The biometric machines, she said, were taking too long to capture the fingerprints of the aging pensioners. But not to worry, she assured, it was averaging only eight minutes to process one applicant. It turned out to be a BIG lie because at 9 p.m. -- 12 hours into the whole episode -- they had processed only 30 people.
At one point, they spent an inordinate amount of time to finish with an applicant, taking their sweet time for as long as three hours. Repeat, three unbelievably long hours to process one single applicant!?! They simply ignored a suggestion that called for them to proceed to the next number if an applicant took longer than a few minutes to register his/her fingerprints.
Ms. Rebong continued with her small talk, emphasizing that the problem was not hers but that of the GSIS; she was only providing them a space to conduct their business at the Consulate. She invited people to invest in the Philippines and to visit. When people began asking for places to eat, she offered them some cookies and coffee in the backroom, but her voice was inaudible that not everyone heard her message. So many in the audience of ailing pensioners, mostly in their 80s and 90s, ended up being hungry just the same because they found out about the snacks only much later.
By passing the buck to the GSIS, she, in effect, was washing her hands off the crisis instead of dealing with it head on. After the GSIS team had ignored sensible suggestions on how to keep the line moving, she should have taken over instead of playing the blame game. Once she knew that the GSIS was totally paralyzed -- like a deer caught in headlights -- in the face of the rapidly deteriorating event, she should have made it clear to them that she was taking over and that it was either her way or the highway. But her lack of leadership was in full display, showing us how incompetent the Philippine government was even in dealing with a hiccup. As the extension of the President of the Philippines in New York, the controversial Ms. Rebong (yes, she with the Trump Towers apartment) was as much responsible for the welfare of the people as the GSIS.
The people were reluctant to leave the building to have a quick bite fearing that they would lose their spot. Ms. Rebong assured them that from time to time, the man who had introduced himself as a GSIS “volunteer” spokesman would give them updates as to what number was being processed so they would have a sense of when their time was due. (We found out later that he was the husband of the leader of the GSIS team who had tagged along with his wife and offered his services to be their spokesman.)
Despite having nodded his head in agreement to what Ms. Rebong had promised, the spokesman lost his tongue for hours on end without following through. But when it came to answering nagging questions from a now irate crowd, he did not pull any punches.
He said that his team owed no one an explanation. When Bernardita, a chemist who accompanied her mother, demanded to know “why you didn't think of solutions to the problems you had encountered in LA and in San Francisco before coming to New York,” he shot back that "we do not have to tell you anything."
“Don’t you feel any consideration for the sick and the elderly who are here and who have to brave the arctic cold just to be here?” someone asked. He retorted: "If you feel the cold, how much more we who are not used to this kind of weather?" Another classic quote from this man: "You should go to Manila. The line there is up to 350 people daily."
This man was absolutely nuts! Did he expect the crowd to jump up and down in glee over what he said inasmuch as there were only over 200 people now waiting for hours in New York compared to over 100 more in Manila? Let us not forget that almost all the pensioners present were old and sickly, some of them wheelchair bound and all taking medications for diseases ranging from asthma to diabetes to stroke to heart problems and many other illnesses. One man had to be rushed out of the building to go to dialysis.
Indeed, since the team had encountered the same problems in LA and San Francisco why didn't they calibrate their moves and ask for more people and more machines to do the biometric finger printing? They also blew their chance to send out a new advisory that could have warned pensioners of the impending nightmare they would face due to their problems with their computers.
Their failure to communicate led to the total collapse of their mission in New York, had unnecessary put the pensioners’ welfare at great risk and caused people to spend much-needed money for hotel rooms, food and other expenses that came along with staying in an expensive city like New York. It also humiliated the pensioners, having been made to endure an arduously painful wait for their number to be called.
At around 5 p.m., Ms. Rebong once again emerged from the backroom and gave a small talk inviting people to invest in the Philippines and to visit. But many in the crowd were so disgusted at that point that her plea fell on deaf ears. Their attitude in the end can be summed up this way: "If you cannot even handle a small event like this, how can you expect us to believe you about the beautiful things you are saying about the Philippines?" In short, who is she jerking around?
At this juncture, the spokesman also sprang to life and finally rediscovered his tongue. He kept saying that the people could leave, as that was an "option."
This man simply didn’t get it. By telling that to people who had to sacrifice their precious time to be there because of the GSIS’ failure to communicate, he showed total callousness and insensitivity to their plight. Didn’t he realize that what was needed at that stage were ways to alleviate the situation rather than aggravate it with his asinine comments?
What the people resented the most about this man was that he made it sound like the pensioners owed the government money instead of the other way around.
His cavalier attitude toward people with unanswered questions not only betrayed his ignorance but also his arrogance. Like Garcia who is deaf to the protests against the delay in the release of pension checks back home while he chases his dream of “catapulting” the Philippines to the top of the Internet totem pole, the spokesman couldn’t have cared less for the health of the elderly nor for the precious time of the people who accompanied them.
It was ironic that what could have been one shining moment for the Filipinos' engenuity so quickly deteriorated into a window into how the Philippine bureaucracy is so incompetent, inept and unable to adopt to a changing situation.
If this is the best the Philippine government can do to its pensioners in New York, we wonder what horrors the local pensioners must be going through in their daily contact with a totally useless bureaucracy led by petty tyrants from the President down to self-absorbed characters like Garcia.
What a cruel joke foisted upon a hapless people.
***
During the nightmarish ordeal, we have encountered some fellow Filipinos who have sent us updates on their own hellish experience:
“Hi Pierce,
“Did you finish your business yesterday [March 9]? I couldn't come back and I am going back when the system is set up for individual appointments.
“It was good meeting you and knowing you instantaneously yesterday. Keep in touch.
“I will call Edmund from The Filipino Reporter to try going back on Monday and Tuesday to find out if they have done anything at all to make things a little better for the people.
“I will also send a fax to the Consul on Monday and ask her to show consideration to the poor people who will be there on Monday [March 11] and Tuesday [March 12].
“Regards,
“Berns”
“Hi Pierce,
“Thanks for the info. My mother finally got processed at 1:30 a.m. the following day, and we left immediately for Massachusetts and got home about 6:45 a.m.
“While waiting back at the Consulate, I felt bad for some of the older people who had to take a cab by themselves. I also felt bad for the bank employees who actually were very pleasant inspite of the fact that they were so tired, not only because they processed so many people non stop but also because they just arrived from LA yesterday and had only one or two hours of sleep. If there was anything I would be mad at these bank employees, it has to be the fact that They didn't listen to anyone's suggestion about changing the way people were getting scanned making it impossible to move the number of people to get processed.
“The spokesperson, I believe, was the husband of the bank team leader so he was actually a volunteer. As far as who to blame, it's got to be the GSIS who in the same bureaucratic attitude makes all pensioners feel that they owed them (GSIS) money instead of the other way around.
“Regards,
“Floy”
“I am sorry for you and your mom but glad that you made it home without any incidents. Yes, the bottomline is this was all a mess because they did not plan this as well as they should have. I am sorry that those employees were overworked, and this was not their fault.
“But I have a problem with the volunteer who was in effect the face of the GSIS. But let's face it, he was not doing a good job of being spokesman because he did not know to communicate nor deal with people with respect. Before you came, and this was in the early morning, he acted condescendingly toward people who asked him questions. He had no clue as to what was going on.
“And besides, the fact that he was staying in hotel room with his wife paid for by GSIS money in one way or the other gave him some perks on the back of his wife. So he should not have acted the way he did, talking as though the old people did not matter nor did your precious time nor mine.
“Like Bernadette, I am furious over what happened and will pursue this by writing letters to those concerned in the Philippines. The only good thing that came out good in all of this is that I have met people like you and Bernadette and all those others in the room.”
